It must have been at least three hours since I had calmed myself after I had kept in my mind of the accepted hypothesis for our current operation. I could feel the gentle cold wind of the night penetrated through my armor, reaching to my skins before it went away while at the same time, the firewood stove lighting at the center of the living room suppressed the cold, relieving me with warmth through its dancing flame.
I also closed my eyes for once in a while, slowly surrendering myself to the fatigue that my body had endured since the beginning of the operation. However, seeing how fast asleep Billy was and how exhausted he seemed to be, I forced myself to keep my eyes wide open. In order to do that, I focused my eyes on Jessica, who was also sleeping peacefully with her sweet facial expression. Just looking at her finally had herself calm somehow put me more at ease, and by the time I realized it, I had been smiling all the time when I was looking at her.
"I am probably not one to say, but it seems that she has a crush on you, Travis…" Billy suddenly said, seemingly with a little smile on his face.
"Sorry?" I stumbled upon his words, not really sure on how to respond him.
"Well, it is just when she was very afraid this afternoon at that site, and you instantly calmed her down when I noticed it right away. It was only a faint sign, sure. But I am pretty positive that she started to have feelings for you because of your reactions." Billy replied to me, chuckling as he said it.
My heart raced once I heard those words from him. I mean, sure in my eyes Jessica had an interesting physical figure. I also adored her since she looked like she was a hardworking person, and also can defend herself in desperate situations. But still, his sudden words made my mind could not focus in an instant. Thus, I changed his topic to how she could manage to save us in front of the mansion back in the afternoon.
"Yeah, despite being afraid, she still managed to shot those aliens with her shotgun." I said to him, as I smiled and a little bit embarrassed. "I am impressed."
Billy did not respond anything and only smiled before he nodded after I said my words. It also made me remembered that she had not yet used the shotgun again other than at that previous encounter. When I looked around, the shotgun turned out to be rested just beside her backpack. I turned again to Billy who had closed his eyes again, but apparently had not fallen asleep. Thus, I began to pick up another topic to ask him.
"Why did you choose to serve the Army, Bill?" I asked him.
At first he did not respond right away. However he did opened his eyes again right after I asked him about it. He looked at me first, before then looking down and began to answer.
"I did not originally want to be a soldier…" Billy said as he sighed. "I chose to get a bachelor's degree in international relations because I wanted to build a career path in the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nation), but… something terrible happened to my family…"
"Something… terrible?" I asked him, as I frowned my forehead in reflex.
"My brother… he passed away…" he replied to me, as he seemed to clench his teeth.
He told me that he used to have a brother, two years younger than him. He was enrolled to a different campus, and was brighter in academic aspects. Billy's family actually had higher hopes on his brother, and everything seemed to be going in the right way. That was, until the unfortunate fateful event that took place in June 2033.
There had been a hostage situation on a mall in a metropolitan area at that time, conducted by a radical anti-governments group. They demanded the president to step down from his office by twelve hours, as well as a ransom with a total of thirty hundred trillion rupiahs. If either of the conditions were not satisfied, they would begin to kill all of the a hundred and fifty hostages inside the mall in each five minutes gap, right outside the main entrance of the mall.
Of course, the government chose to dispatch the anti-terrorism force in order to deal with the situation. However, it turned out that the radical group had been anticipating it all along. Very shortly after the anti-terrorism force had entered the mall through various entrances, all except for the main entrance was blown up by them, resulting in most of the personnel to be wiped out.
To make it worse, the rest of the others held up at the main entrance ended up being a hostage, or shot in the head. That, and every inches of detail about it was broadcasted live in various news channels. It turned out that the radical group had three international terrorist organizations backed them up right from the start.
Almost immediately after the massacre, the radical group announced their new demands. They shortened the deadline of the president's resignation to four hours, as well as raising the ransom demands twice the original amount. With that conditions stated, the government had then either had to send in the whole branch of military force to deal with them, or gave up to their demands.
After some rough and chaotic emergency discussions, the government decided to make a ploy as the solution. They would pretend to divide the ransom money by three in each hour, while the military force would close in at the same time when the radical group and the terrorists had their attention locked at the delivered money.
The solution seemed to be working out well and with each hour passed, good results seemed to be imminent. However yet again, another unexpected thing had happened. Two of the radical group and terrorists suddenly went out from the main entrance of the mall together with two of the hostages, all with their hands tied and head covered with masks.
They then forced them to kneel, before spraying their bodies with their FN FAL battle rifle. The scene caused an immediate hysterical reaction from the live broadcaster, but what made everyone sick was the statement made by the armed radicals and terrorists, saying that they were only testing fire and they could not find anything else to be used as their targets.
That action made the whole government angry, and thus the president himself ordered a full immediate military storm to the mall. The crossfire ensued for about four hours, and it ended in twenty radicals and terrorists deaths, four arrested, as well as an estimated of two or three escaped by using the mall sewage system.
The aftermath of the tragedy brought relieve to most of the people and families, except for the family of two of the deceased hostages. One of the hostage was revealed to be one of the senior staff of the mall, selected randomly by the radicals. However, when the time finally came to reveal the other deceased hostage, it was at that exact moment when Billy's family had to swallow a harsh truth.
The hostage was none other than Billy's younger brother. The news instantly put his mother to faint, and it was all the more disheartening to know when forensics estimated that he might have been still alive, although with a very slim chance, had the dispatched emergency medical team had not met any obstacles on their way to the scene, which had been set up by the terrorists. The worst part for Billy? It all happened on the day he had his undergraduate thesis defense.
"Jesus Christ…" I muttered to myself as I was completely shocked to hear his story.
He told me that it was very hard for him to swallow, but he still felt like something was missing and so he then searched for further information about it, and ended up on finding out something that made him fell to his knees and curse every kind of radical groups and terrorism up to this day.
It was when few of the surviving hostages confessed to him, that originally it was not Billy's brother who was chosen by the terrorists to be shot out in the open. It was supposed to be a fifteen year old girl, who had been scared all the time and tied right beside him when the hostage situation took place.
Billy's brother volunteered to replace her, most likely because he wanted to prevent the girl from being assaulted before eventually shot to death. Billy could even barely hold his consciousness when the confessing person said that the terrorists had informed all of the hostages that two of them would have to be their living targets.
When he finished telling me up until that point, my whole body was shaking. I have to admit that I had no idea how cruel and inhumane a radical or a terrorist group could be, but the things that I had just heard were just completely beyond of what I would consider as the extreme points of inhumane. I did not know why, but since him and Jessica were best friends I asked him if she knew about the complete detail story.
"Does Jessica know about this?" I asked him, with a low voice and still shaking.
"Yes. And only her, aside from my whole family." He responded plain and simple, looking straight to my eyes.
"How did she respond?" I asked him again, somehow with my body shaking a little more violently after that.
"To this day, I have never again seen her crying and hysteric like that…" he answered me as he gulped and looked down. "Heh, even holding her tight was not enough back then to calm her down. Maybe because both of them were pretty close too…"
Right on the first month after the passing of his late younger brother, Billy promised him that he would take down the radical groups and terrorists leader by his own hand. Due to that promise, he put aside his interests in making a career at ASEAN, and chose to serve in the Indonesian Army, and eventually to its Special Forces Command. As it turned out, it was a promise that he eventually fulfilled about fifteen months after the tragedy.
It had been barely a month since his official days as a Special Forces Command soldier, and they had been dispatched with the order to assist the anti-terrorist group to wipe out the main forces of one of the very same group that had caused his late brother's demise.
The operation went well, until the same assisting group ambushed the team. Billy, however had anticipated about that possibility and thus when half of the Special Forces Command had been pinned down, he led three of the still available men to launch a sneak attack against the whole radical and terrorist group.
Ignoring the odds but still had himself on full alert, he managed to lead the other three men to silently take down the terrorists down, and by the time they realized that the Special Forces Command had penetrated deep inside their own territory, it had been too late for them. The anti-terrorist force and the Special Forces Command wiped out the whole group about two hours after Billy launched the sneak attack.
Finally eye to eye with the top leader of the radical group, they were engaged in a gunfight, with Billy gaining the upper hand little by little until he was able to shoot both of the leader's knees, preventing him to be able to move around anymore. As Billy was just about to arrest the leader, he mocked him hard saying that he was just fighting for a useless cause.
At first, he ignored all of his mockeries, until he mentioned 'just like the young pretty boy who sacrificed himself for a teenage girl that he barely knew' that he was finally fueled with complete rage.
Billy then shot each of the leader's knees once again with his handgun, before he hit the leader's forehead with the bottom of the handgun, making him to fall down face-up hard. He then proceeded to take the leader's pump shotgun and shot both of his arms with it until the shotgun was empty, resulting in the dismemberment of both of the arms.
The radical leader was screaming, still alive and breathing. Billy then continued by unsheathing his knife and force-opened the leader's mouth before he cut the leader's tongue off, throwing it away and shot it with his handgun.
As the leader could no longer talk, Billy said to him with his composure that had then returned to him again that he would have wished he had never taken away the boy's life for his brother had searched for him and delivered him the price he had due, a price that he would regret to take for the rest of his life.
I was so satisfied inside when Billy told me that not even a single of the men that he had led inside attempted to stop him. The leader was then taken away by dragging as he did not stop screaming and ranting gibberish, and when it was time for debriefing by the Commander General, he called him for an important matter to discuss further.
Billy had been expecting some sort of punishment due to his violent actions, but instead, he was comforted by the Commander General, saying that he had delivered himself and his brother justice, a statement which made Billy burst out in tears instantly on the General's shoulder. It was also at that moment, when the Commander General said that he was looking straight right at the future commander of the Special Forces Command, a statement which he apparently also shared with only very few other outstanding personnel.
"I am very glad for your brother and your family Bill…" I could finally say it to him, with a smile across my face.
"Thank you… I really appreciate it. Although, I suppose you should also give your credit to the other three men." He responded to me, still not forgetting the invaluable efforts that his colleagues had given to him.
"So? What about now? You have already had your mission completed, are you not thinking of going back to your passion in building your career in ASEAN?" I asked him, to find out what his final resolve was.
"About that…." he answered me, before he paused for a moment, "I have decided that this is the path that I should take until the end of the road. I am not doing this only for the sake of my brother or for myself. I am doing this so that there will be no more that kind of teenage girl, no more people ending up like my brother…"
He said it boldly and straight to my eyes, and I believed he was not even blinking. It was at that moment when I completely realized that I was indeed looking at a great future military leader, a young man with a full resolve at what he had to do next, and what steps that he had to take in order to realize it. I even began to think that Commodore Quentin would kill to work together with him in other provided opportunities.
Billy then stood up, and said that it was my time to get some sleep. I responded by saying that he would also need one, to which he said that he had his spirits up since he shared his past with me, and so he would stand guard for the house. Realizing that there was no way for me to change his mind, I said good night to him as I began to rest my head on my backpack.
As I watched the firewood flame that danced gently in front of me, I could no longer hold my eyes from shutting down, slowly covering my sights with nothing but pitch black…